scholarly journals Dopamine Cell Therapy: From Cell Replacement to Circuitry Repair

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-7
Author(s):  
Anders Björklund ◽  
Malin Parmar

Cell therapy for Parkinson’s disease (PD) is aimed to replace the degenerated midbrain dopamine (mDA) neurons and restore DA neurotransmission in the denervated forebrain targets. A limitation of the intrastriatal grafting approach, which is currently used in clinical trials, is that the mDA neurons are implanted into the target area, in most cases the putamen, and not in the ventral midbrain where they normally reside. This ectopic location of the cells may limit their functionality due to the lack of appropriate afferent regulation from the host. Homotopic transplantation, into the substantia nigra, is now being pursued in rodent PD models as a way to achieve more complete circuitry repair. Intranigral grafts of mDA neurons, derived from human embryonic stem cells, have the capacity to re-establish the nigrostriatal and mesolimbic pathways in their entirety and restore dense functional innervations in striatal, limbic and cortical areas. Tracing of host afferent inputs using the rabies tracing technique shows that the afferent connectivity of grafts implanted in the nigra matches closely that of the intrinsic mDA system, suggesting a degree of circuitry reconstruction that exceeds what has been achieved before. This approach holds great promise, but to match the larger size of the human brain, and the 10 times greater distance between substantia nigra and its forebrain targets, it may be necessary to find ways to improve the growth capacity of the grafted mDA neurons, pointing to a combined approach where growth promoting factors are used to enhance the performance of mDA neuron grafts.

2017 ◽  
Vol 2017 ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Xinxin Han ◽  
Liming Yu ◽  
Jie Ren ◽  
Min Wang ◽  
Zhongliang Liu ◽  
...  

Stem cell-based therapies have been used for repairing damaged brain tissue and helping functional recovery after brain injury. Aberrance neurogenesis is related with brain injury, and multipotential neural stem cells from human embryonic stem (hES) cells provide a great promise for cell replacement therapies. Optimized protocols for neural differentiation are necessary to produce functional human neural stem cells (hNSCs) for cell therapy. However, the qualified procedure is scarce and detailed features of hNSCs originated from hES cells are still unclear. In this study, we developed a method to obtain hNSCs from hES cells, by which we could harvest abundant hNSCs in a relatively short time. Then, we examined the expression of pluripotent and multipotent marker genes through immunostaining and confirmed differentiation potential of the differentiated hNSCs. Furthermore, we analyzed the mitotic activity of these hNSCs. In this report, we provided comprehensive features of hNSCs and delivered the knowledge about how to obtain more high-quality hNSCs from hES cells which may help to accelerate the NSC-based therapies in brain injury treatment.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 157-169 ◽  
Author(s):  
Hui Hu ◽  
Yuanyuan Ding ◽  
Wenbo Mu ◽  
Ying Li ◽  
Yanpeng Wang ◽  
...  

Cell therapy has great promise for treating gastrointestinal motility disorders caused by intestinal nervous system (ENS) diseases. However, appropriate sources, other than enteric neural stem cells and human embryonic stem cells, are seldom reported. Here, we show that neural progenitors derived from the dorsal root ganglion (DRG) of EGFP mice survived, differentiated into enteric neurons and glia cells, migrated widely from the site of injection, and established neuron-muscle connections following transplantation into the distal colon of postnatal mice. The exogenous EGFP+ neurons were physiologically functional as shown by the activity of calcium imaging. This study shows that that other tissues besides the postnatal bowel harbor neural crest stem cells or neural progenitors that have the potential to differentiate into functional enteric neurons in vivo and can potentially be used for intestinal nerve regeneration. These DRG-derived neural progenitor cells may be a choice for cell therapy of ENS disease as an allograft. The new knowledge provided by our study is important for the development of neural crest stem cell and cell therapy for the treatment of intestinal neuropathy.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Attwood ◽  
Michael Edel

The use of induced Pluripotent Stem Cells (iPSC) as a source of autologous tissues shows great promise in regenerative medicine. Nevertheless, several major challenges remain to be addressed before iPSC-derived cells can be used in therapy, and experience of their clinical use is extremely limited. In this review, the factors affecting the safe translation of iPSC to the clinic are considered, together with an account of efforts being made to overcome these issues. The review draws upon experiences with pluripotent stem-cell therapeutics, including clinical trials involving human embryonic stem cells and the widely transplanted mesenchymal stem cells. The discussion covers concerns relating to: (i) the reprogramming process; (ii) the detection and removal of incompletely differentiated and pluripotent cells from the resulting medicinal products; and (iii) genomic and epigenetic changes, and the evolutionary and selective processes occurring during culture expansion, associated with production of iPSC-therapeutics. In addition, (iv) methods for the practical culture-at-scale and standardization required for routine clinical use are considered. Finally, (v) the potential of iPSC in the treatment of human disease is evaluated in the light of what is known about the reprogramming process, the behavior of cells in culture, and the performance of iPSC in pre-clinical studies.


Stem Cells ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 28 (8) ◽  
pp. 1355-1367 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jelena Zlatkovic-Lindor ◽  
D. Kent Arrell ◽  
Satsuki Yamada ◽  
Timothy J. Nelson ◽  
Andre Terzic

2014 ◽  
Vol 115 (suppl_1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Mohsin Khan ◽  
Suresh K Verma ◽  
Alexander R Mackie ◽  
Erin Vaughan ◽  
Srikanth Garikipati ◽  
...  

Rationale: Embryonic stem cells (ESCs) hold great promise for cardiac regeneration but are susceptible to ethical concerns, lack of autologous donors and teratoma formation. Recently, it has been observed that beneficial effects of stem cells are mediated by exosomes secreted out under various physiological conditions. ESCs have the ability to produce exosomes however their effect in the context of the heart is unknown. Objective: Determine the effect of ESC derived exosomes for cardiac repair and modulation of CPCs functions in the heart following myocardial infarction. Methods and Results: Exosomes were isolated from murine ESCs (mES Ex) or embryonic fibroblasts (MEFs) by ultracentrifugation and verified by Flotillin-1 immunoblot analysis. Induction of pluripotent markers, survival and in vitro tube formation was enhanced in target cells receiving ESC exosomes indicating therapeutic potential of mES Ex. mES Ex administration resulted in enhanced neovascularization, cardiomyocyte survival and reduced fibrosis post infarction consistent with resurgence of cardiac proliferative response. Importantly, mES Ex mediated considerable enhancement of cardiac progenitor cell (CPC) survival, proliferation and cardiac commitment concurrent with increased c-kit+ CPCs in vivo 4 weeks after mES Ex transfer. miRNA Array analysis of ESC and MEF exosomes revealed significantly high expression of miR290-295 cluster in the ESC exosomes compared to MEF exosomes. The underlying beneficial effect of mES Ex was tied to delivery of ESC miR-294 to the heart and in particular CPCs thereby promoting CPC survival and proliferation as analyzed by FACS based cell death analysis and CyQuant assay respectively. Interestingly, enhanced G1/S transition was observed in CPCs treated with miR-294 in conjunction with significant reduction of G1 phase. Conclusion: In conclusion, mES Ex provide a novel cell free system for cardiac regeneration with the ability to modulate both cardiomyocyte and CPC based repair programs in the heart thereby avoiding the risk of teratoma formation associated with ESCs.


2009 ◽  
Vol 52 (7) ◽  
pp. 599-602 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jie Hao ◽  
WanWan Zhu ◽  
Chao Sheng ◽  
Yang Yu ◽  
Qi Zhou

Author(s):  
Fariha Khaliq

Stem cell therapy is an approach to use cells that have the ability of self-renewal and to differentiate into different types of functional cells that are obtained from embryo and other postnatal sources to treat multiple disorders. These cells can be differentiated into different types of stem cells based on their specific characteristics to be totipotent, unipotent, multipotent or pluripotent. As potential therapy, pluripotent stem cells are considered to be the most interesting as they can be differentiated into different type of cells with similar characteristics as embryonic stem cells. Induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs) are adult cells that are reprogrammed genetically into stem cells from human fibroblasts through expressing genes and transcription factors at different time intervals. In this review, we will discuss the applications of stem cell therapy using iPSCs technology in treating neurodegenerative disorder such that Alzheimer’s disease (AD), Parkinson’s disease (PD), and Amyotrophic Lateral Sclerosis (ALS). We have also broadly highlighted the significance of pluripotent stem cells in stem cell therapy.


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